persons, old and young, are affected, for the fear is the punishment of the belief, and it is no excuse that the ignorant have no belief, as they must suffer for the sins of their parents. Science is the sun that burns up the clouds or changes the beliefs of man, and a little ray of intelligence springs up and the cloud of superstition vanishes, as the true God appears. The people will hail the truth, as the peak of Teneriffe hails the rising sun long before it is seen by the horizon of the common minds.
I will bring some cases to show that phenomena that once took place can never be produced again. This fact holds good in the vegetable as well as in the mental world. Take a primeval forest, cut down the old growth and another will spring up, not like the first, but a more solid, thicker growth. So it is with error; like an old growth, error is tall and porous with a great show. Science is denser and more substantial. Error is the natural growth of man; it is a wilderness filled with all kinds of superstition and every one is liable to be caught by a native of this land. It is inhabited by every variety of creature such as consumption and liver complaint. Science is the axe in the hands of Wisdom to hew down the wilderness and destroy its inhabitants and introduce a better state of society. Like all superstition error is very religious, religion and slavery always go hand in hand; freedom and science also go together and are the same. . . . Science in religion has not made much progress except as an indirect result of some other development. Astronomy has destroyed some of the hideous features of religion and introduced a happier state of society, but it was not the design of astronomy to destroy religion. Still it is the natural result of science to destroy error and prejudice. It sometimes comes in contact with the most enlightened state of intelligence, for that is cursed with the shackles of religion of dark ages. You will see religion in its purest state under the most despotic form of government, and you will always find disease under some despotic power of religion, and those who undertake to rid the world of this evil are like demagogues in a despotism. Such is the essence of hypocrisy intended to keep the masses weak so they can be ruled. Starve the masses and you destroy their energy and make them desperate, then the more enlightened will submit to the leaders for their own safety. This
